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The classic problem of many science fields is you can only weigh something if you stop it, or you can determine where it’s going, but then you can’t weigh it. Fortunately, this is less of a problem with demographic data where you can measure where it’s been and measure where it is now and at least forecast where it’s going. Why is it then many fail to take advantage of this? Last month an article has made the claim that children are disappearing from urban areas and others have picked up on it. The assertion is based on data from one point in time; the 2010 US Census. Their conclusion? Cities are unfriendly toward children and what is more, cities are not doing enough about it.

First, let’s expand the data to more than a single year. Nationally children are becoming a smaller percentage of the population, from 24.0 percent in 2010 to 23.5 percent in 2012; so it is only natural that dense urban areas reflect that trend as well. But wait! Half of the cities listed below didn’t! They actually increased their percentage of children, and even San Francisco with its astronomical housing prices was able to maintain its current percentage.

Population Under 18 years

United States

24.0%

23.5%

Rank

Municipality

2010 Census

2012 ACS 1-yr

1

San Francisco city, CA

107,524 (13.4%)

13.4%

2

Seattle city, WA

93,513 (15.4%)

15.3%

3

Pittsburgh city, PA

49,799 (16.3%)

16.1%

4

Washington City, DC

100,815 (16.8%)

17.3%

5

Boston city, MA

103,710 (16.8%)

17.3%

6

Urban Honolulu CDP, HI

58,727 (17.4%)

17.3%

7

Miami city, FL

73,446 (18.4%)

18.8%

8

Portland city, OR

111,523 (19.1%)

19.2%

9

Atlanta city, GA

81,410 (19.4%)

18.4%

10

Minneapolis city, MN

77,204 (20.2%)

20.7%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS)

Second, it’s true that two data points do not a trend make, so let’s investigate why this percentage of children is increasing in these cities and estimate if it will continue. I use Washington, DC as an example. In DC’s case, between 2000 and 2010 it was one of the top cities for attracting recent college graduates due to the combination of growing tech and federal job opportunities. This is probably true for other cities where tech, finance and other industries were growing. Well it’s only natural that these young professionals who migrated as singles met, hooked up and guess what happened next.

What has changed in this age old story? In the past, those new young families moved to the suburbs largely because of the poorly performing urban schools. In the case of the District of Columbia, Boston and a few other cities, what may be responsible for reversing this trend is the move toward universal free public pre-school for three and four year olds. Not only does this save young professional families upwards of $20,000 per year per kid in daycare costs, it introduces them to the public/charter school system, which helps to change their perception of the schools. This has created a wave of middle-class children diversifying the public schools while their parents have networked and brought their collective political clout to improve the schools even further.

The private sector in DC has also seen the shift in the market and responded by adding baby happy hours and children’s cultural and athletic opportunities to go along with all the other great children’s activities that are available in DC.

The change in the percent of households with children under the age of 18 has also reflected the shift, moving from 19.3 percent in 2010 to 20.3 percent in 2012. The DC Office of Planning (OP) believes the shift is strong enough and sustainable that their official ten-year forecast through 2020 includes the number of children under the age of 18 increasing by as much as 50,000. This would push the number of households with children to approximately 25.0 or 26.0 percent by 2022, but only require about 20% of single-family housing to flip from older/childless households to these new families.

The District’s housing market has also been impacted. According to Zillow.com, over the past two years prices have grown three times as fast per year for three bedroom units (18 percent per year) as for 1-bedroom units (5 percent per year). DC’s housing is already very expensive, and many single-family row houses are being split into smaller units for the large numbers of singles, but the $20,000 savings in daycare translates into some serious purchasing power for those who have the means to leverage it. This of course has the potential to exacerbate the displacement of lower income families in many of the District’s neighborhoods, but the city has also embarked on an ambitious goal of 10,000 new affordable units by 2020 and recently dedicated $187 million dollars for affordable housing to reach that goal.

Urban schools and housing costs certainly make it challenging to raise a family in a city, and cities can do more to make it easier, but I can personally attest through my investigation of the data and my own experiences as an urban parent that, at best, these recent blogs see the glass half full. Time will tell, but it certainly looks like many cities, including Washington, DC, are setting the table for families with children by improving public and charter school performance; offering universal pre-kindergarten, revitalized public libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks and recreation centers; providing increasingly convenient neighborhoods throughout the city with services and retail in most communities; and creating lots of transportation choices that help families access all the city has to offer.

Art Rodgers is the Senior Housing Planner at the Office of Planning. The opinions expressed in this post belong solely to Art Rodgers and should not be construed as the official opinion of the DC Office of Planning.

The previous OPinions blog post talked about the release of the District’s final Sustainable DC Planto make Washington, DC the healthiest, greenest, and most livable city in the nation. The Plan is the result of hard work and collaboration by the Sustainable DC coalition of District agencies, residents, and stakeholders from the private, non-profit and institutional sectors. The Sustainable DC Plan addresses the challenges of creating jobs and growing the District’s economy; improving the health and wellness of residents; ensuring equity and diversity across the city; and improving the climate and the environment. It puts forth goals, targets, and specific actions to implement the plan over the next twenty years.

Recent articles and posts everywhere, including Greater Greater Washington, have talked about how housing is becoming unaffordable. However, the graph below suggests that home prices may be more affordable now than they were in 1990. It was constructed by calculating the purchasing power of household income using prevailing mortgage rates and comparing it to the growth of the Case-Shiller Index over time.

Source: HUD, FHLMC, S&P Case-Shiller, DC Office of Planning.

In 1990 the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated the Area Median Income (AMI) for the Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was $51,000, and according to FreddieMac the average interest rate for a home mortgage was 10.13 percent! This suggests the typical household could afford a mortgage of about $144,000[1]. Over time the AMI went up and interest rates went down. In 2012 HUD estimates the AMI is $107,500 and interest rates average 3.5 percent. Using the same calculation, the same typical household can now afford a mortgage of $595,000. When the average annual rate of change in the Case-Shiller Index is applied over time to the same starting point of $144,000, the index suggests a current home price of $527,000.

So yes, housing prices have outpaced household income, but this analysis suggests that it’s primarily due to increased buying power from low interest rates that has inflated housing prices and not a gap between supply and demand or other factors. If this is the case, it raises some different, but vital questions the region should be asking:

If prices are up in large part due to interest rates being kept perhaps artificially low? What happens when those rates go back up? The Federal Reserve’s program of quantitative easing seeks to offer a soft landing to keep housing prices stabilized. But unlike everything else, the saying for interest rates is “what goes down must come up.” A simple increase in interest rates from 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent reduces purchasing power by $67,000 or 11 percent. Renting will become more attractive. However, to the extent this affects housing prices, how will local budgets be affected by potentially even lower property values?

The problem is perhaps not a shortage of housing, but where the housing is in relation to the jobs. Drive till you qualify is certainly part of the problem. OP’s study on housing & transportation costs estimated that lower transportation costs in the District can save a household on average $4,000 to as much as $16,000 annually compared to the outlying suburbs, but the lending industry doesn’t recognize the savings from low transportation costs or the expense of a high cost area when underwriting loans.

It’s also the region’s overall imbalance, where all the jobs are to the west and all the lower cost housing is to the east. In Prince George’s County the median sales price is $177,500 and demand has only recently taken note of the opportunity. The imbalance adds to the region’s traffic congestion, longer commutes, etc. Therefore, how can we fix the regional jobs/housing imbalance, and create greater housing affordability to the west and more jobs to the east and help people live closer to their work?

Finally, the growing barbell distribution of household income is making it harder for a larger percentage of households on the lower end to afford homeownership. Homeownership does confer several benefits of greater housing cost stability and asset development that can help raise intergenerational wealth. How can these benefits be extended to a wider range of households while growing the stock of affordable units as population increases?

[1] Using the standard 30 percent of income toward housing costs. Down payment requirements held constant.

A recent series of blog posts on Greater Greater Washington have focused on housing in the region. Over the next few weeks OPinions hopes to continue the conversation and potentially raise additional questions for everyone to discuss. Please give us your thoughts.

When it comes to hyperbole, “it’s got it all” might be the most overused, but with regards to describing what makes Columbia Road, NW from 19th to 18th Streets a successful urban street, it’s dead on. Ok, so it doesn’t have a zip line into Rock Creek Park, but with the slope and the trees it could be fabulous.

There are three core elements to the best three blocks in DC and they start with Kalorama Park, which has huge shade trees, two playgrounds, a community garden, a basketball court and a beautiful westward facing slope for catching the sunsets. It is the community’s center and without it, these three blocks would be far more ordinary.

Next it’s got people living in anywhere from six to eight story buildings, to row houses, to even a few single-family detached homes. Through tools like rent control, limited-equity coops, and a few nearby subsidized buildings, all kinds of people live in the neighborhood including fixed-income retirees, a few low-income families and of course the ubiquitous young professionals. That said, I wouldn’t disagree that some more affordable housing, so lower income families could be in boundary and send their kids to one of the District’s best public school at Oyster, would be a good idea.

The final core element is handy daily shopping including two local grocers, three competitive dry cleaners, a liquor store, a gallery/frame shop and an athletic shoe store. Not far away there is a hardware store, an electronics store, a post office, and several import stores. The stores keep the sidewalks active with people running errands, picking up a carton of milk or other sundries or going out for a tasty frozen treat on a hot summer night. Did I mention the range of restaurants from fabulously affordable Mediterranean and Peruvian Chicken to Brazilian, French and Sushi and how they are adapting to the growing population of toddlers? No? Well I have now.

Note: The delicous new restaurant Mintwood Place almost made it into this graphic, but its too new to be a neighborhood institution, however a recent siting of President Obama builds a really strong case! (Graphic: Art Rodgers)

I must admit the rest of what makes the best three blocks in DC are an accident of location. It’s bracketed by Rock Creek to the west, Walter Pierce Park to the north, 18th Street’s entertainment strip and Marie Reed’s comfortably dog eared, but shaded and cool kiddy pool to the east. Beyond the three blocks in the immediate neighborhood are two more supermarkets, and farther are the adjacent destinations of Woodley Park (Red Line Metro) across the fabulous Duke Ellington Bridge, Columbia Heights (Green Line Metro) connected by the DC Circulator and Dupont Circle (Red Line Metro) with all that they offer.

Others may wish to point out how the assets of their neighborhood make them such wonderful places to live, and that’s actually the point. Let’s identify what are the elements of urban areas we love and make sure that all the neighborhoods of DC are provided the same opportunity for relatively sane (but never boring), if not high quality urban living.

We’ve all been here. It’s one of those places where we hand over $1 billion shopping dollars each year to Maryland or Virginia. If even half of that money could be spent in DC, our 6% tax rate would generate $30 million in revenue. That’s enough to supply 300 new affordable housing units, or pay for the education of 1600 District children, every single year.

The city has been working for decades to reverse this loss of dollars, and we’re starting to see results. Larger retailers are moving into the District to supplement our local stores. Some are bringing new designs that fit in with, and bring new life to, our traditional neighborhood centers. Others, unfortunately, continue to bulldoze trees, fill in wetlands, or construct stone-walled mesas so they can just replicate their suburban stores.

Planners need to provide models of how major retailers can come into the city without compromising good design and active street life.

Los Angeles, CA (Credit: Stephen Cochran)

This storefront I saw on Broadway in downtown L.A. shows how to do it: name recognition, openness to the street, pedestrian and bicycles friendliness, and a broad selection of brand goods at every-day low prices.

Having a vital shopping street need not take a zoning overlay, or city subsidies; just some creative entrepreneurs, sensitivity to scale … and a lot of red paint.

Welcome to OPinions, the blog of the DC Office of Planning! We envision this blog as a space for OP staff to dialogue with you about the urban environment and related topics such as urban design, historic preservation, transportation, health and other areas that intersect with planning. We want to talk about innovative, thought-provoking or just plain cool trends and developments in the urban planning world. The geography of our dialogue is not just Washington, DC and its region, but also the United States and the rest of the world. This blog is our room to look beyond our official day-to-day work and talk about what we as individual planners find interesting.

If you want to learn more about the DC Office of Planning and our neighborhood and citywide plans, reports and initiatives, please visit our official website, www.planning.dc.gov. We are also on Twitter and Facebook.